august: cleveland county

Hi everyone!

I haven't had much time to keep up with German politics/culture this month since I started a new job in Pennsylvania. Truth be told, I don't really see myself being able to keep up with Germany for the next few months with the amount of work I'll be doing. So instead, have a few impressions about my life in Pennsylvania.

Wawa is the actual best in that you can make your own iced coffee there.
Mt. Airy is super fancy.
SEPTA is not the worst, and is definitely better than driving into Center City Philadelphia.
Reading Terminal Market is the stuff dreams are made of. I had the best pretzel of my life there + bought some super cheap produce.
Driving is...interesting. People like to take risks and punctuate their risky driving with the melody of a thousand car horns.
Old & historic churches probably don't have air conditioning.
The roads are bad here too.
Full service gas stations still exist (?!)
Philadelphia is much closer to New Jersey than I realized.
The Pennsylvania turnpike costs around $40 if you take it all the way across the state.
Related - you will spend all your money on parking if you drive to Center City.
These people are obsessed with Dunkin Donuts.
The houses are fairytale pretty and the weather is (relatively) mild.
It feels a weird halfway point between Germany and Oklahoma here, culturally, meteorologically, and politically.
Life here is lovely.

It has been a month for international politics. It started with ridiculous fans at Euro 2016 and ended with the Brexit referendum. However, I'm still going to soldier on with my list of links that I bookmarked throughout this month.

The Bundestag voted to recognize the Armenian genocide earlier this month, which certainly didn't help German-Turkish relations, but was celebrated by Armenians in Germany and abroad as a major step for their people. This article (in English) discusses how the resolution was almost unanimous and possible difficulties with Turkey in the future.

Before the Euro 2016 tournament began, an AfD politician remarked that people wouldn't want Boateng as their neighbor. This is part of a larger trend in European soccer where even the national team isn't national enough for the far right.

Related to that is the radio stream I've been using to listen to the German games in Euro 2016. I don't have cable, so WDR has been a lifesaver!

I've been enjoying reading articles from Thueringen24, which has excellent local coverage of Thuringia. I believe they just launched last month; it's really nice to read reports from my German home! This article about a project by exchange students at the technical college was really interesting.

For anyone wondering at home, I finally finished my thesis. Of course, the Rot-Rot-Gruen campaign didn't start on Twitter until I was almost done with my edits - they would have been such a good resource for me! Additionally, Bodo Ramelow, governor of Thuringia, discussed Rot-Rot-Gruen in Berlin earlier this month. This discussion was set off by the news that German President Gauck won't see reelection; some believe that a Rot-Rot-Gruen government will be important for deciding the next president.

This episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class is all about the women of Bauhaus. I love Bauhaus architecture and art, so this podcast was right up my alley!

I'm always excited to see a good photoset from East Germany.

I'm still shocked that Brexit is actually going to happen. Here's the twitter round-up of the EU meetings the Tuesday after the vote.

Finally, it's been 40 years since the first woman was allowed to anchor the nightly news in Germany. She came back to talk about her historic role and to celebrate this anniversary. However, the first woman to do play-by-play commentary for the European soccer tournament was met with threats and complaints earlier this month, which shows that there's still work to do for equality in television.

Democrats in the US House of Representatives staged a day-long sit-in on the House floor in order to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with Congressional inaction on gun violence following the shooting in Orlando. During the sit-in, Congress was in recess, so the usual cameras were shut off in accordance with House rules. As a result, members streamed their experiences on Periscope and Facebook, which had the end effect of making the entire thing much more accessible to millennials than it would have been if it had only been on CSPAN.



The European Parliament has a history of sometimes dramatic behavior, like earlier this year when a Greek MEP was thrown out of the European Parliament for racist remarks, but this week was much more exciting.

First UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage was booed as he made a victory lap of sorts in the European Parliament and proceeded to tell his coworkers that they knew nothing of work or job creation.

Legislatures have been fun to watch this week, but I hope that things calm down soon so that these men and women can get back to their less exciting but very important jobs.

If you can find Alexanderplatz, you can find a drugstore because that area has two.

Pinterest always tries to recommend posts to me about packing tips for a trip to Europe. However, most of these posts seem to be under the impression that Europe is a third world continent without drugstores. Germany, for example, has two successful drugstore chains called DM and Rossmann. Both carry very similar (if not the precise same) products as American drugstores, and the prices are usually quite reasonable.